Admonished
by Kira
Summary: Missing Scene, The Reckoning; reflections in cold solitude (Vaughn-centric)


**Title**: Admonished  
**Author**: Kira [kira at sd-1 dot com]  
**Genre**: Angst  
**Character**: Vaughn introspection  
**Summary**: Missing scene (The Reckoning), reflection in a state of solitude

____ 

A soft wind blew through the trees. 

The sun sat high above, a spattering of clouds settled against it, their shifts and sways in the wind giving momentary shade to the proceedings. He felt as if the sun was wasted on such a day. 

Michael Vaughn shifted his weight as he stood motionless before the others, facing the flag covered casket with a sense of nostalgia. His green eyes, usually impassioned and flaming with a long-burning fire of vengeance sat almost flat against a threatening moisture, his lip red as he bit it in futile resistance. 

Admonished. 

He'd hated that word since childhood, since they had come to his home in a late autumn afternoon, swept away leaves crunching under the tires of their sleek black car, their faces blank, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. His mother had crumbled, there, her sobs falling on deaf ears as the men spoke in turn, each reciting the script they had memorized years ago. 

A script he now knew by heart. 

He knew now how the men had heard her cries, had felt her pain, yet stood there as if they did not care – could not care. Their feet crossed dying grass, leaving prints in flattened reeds of yellow, the sounds of their departure echoing in the fall silence. He was left, his small arms thrown lovingly around the form of his mother as she sat just inside the front door, legs curled beneath her as her heart poured from her in the form of tiny drops of rain. 

He had sat with her until she could cry no more, until her tears could no longer fall. It was not for trying, though. 

Vaughn's aged eyes, holding wisdom beyond their 34 years, flickered over to the widow, her head hung low, hand coming to her eyes as she dried her tears on gloved hands. Vaughn choked back his own emotion. 

Without emotion. 

The day had not been like this, with the sun holding its head high in the sky, as if to protest the solemn occasion. Dark clouds had threatened rain as a cold wind whipped around skits and scarves, coats pulled tight around aching and shattered bodies as words were thrown to the wind. His mother stood, her head proud, eyes locked on the box where her husband's body now lie, cold to the touch, life spent. Her hear ached, wishing for his love, that half of her heart that completed her. Her son stood clutched to her leg, eyes focused on the ground, the memories of his father running through his head like the scenes from a news reel, his small, young mind unable to comprehend the absence of he father. 

The men who had come to their small home stood as silent as ever, never giving reassurance, never giving the compassion of a human when one suffers a loss such as this. Silent, they stood, their coats open and flapping in the wind. He so wished, as a child, to run up to them, demand for them to tell him it was all a lie, his tiny fists pounding against knees and stomachs. He stood next to his mother, though, his tears silent as he buried his face in her narrow leg, wishing they could leave, could go somewhere warmer than this. 

Yet even at home, he felt this coldness. Bitter cold that threatened to freeze his very soul. 

Vaughn's hands were red where they had clutched the edges of the wooden frame, the metal tucked safely within. With three steps across green grass, indents left like those on his lawn. He handed it to the broken woman, his eyes sad, siding with her, speaking of his sorrow, of his condolence. He had *known* this man, had spoken with him, and now his body, his remains sat in another wooden box. 

The widow accepted, her eyes locking with his for just a moment, a spark lit behind them. She understood, she knew. 

Vaughn took his place once again, listening as words were giving to the sun and his proud rays. Listened as sobs sounded from the rows. And then, his eyes found the boy. 

The boy was small, he assumed around 7 or 8, sitting on a chair too large for his small growing frame, his blond hair falling into his eyes as he looked to the ground. He spilled not a tear, simply sat and listened to words he did not understand. He wished, just as Vaughn had at his age, for his father to come from behind the trees, a smile on his weathered face as he laughed and joked. He would cross the distance between them with superhuman speed, pull his son into his arms and swing him above into the sky, their laughter combining to create the sweetest sound the mother had ever heard. 

Why would he not appear?

Vaughn glanced to the others, there with him, representatives, security. Blank faces looked back at him. He would not be those men, those men who had crushed his family like ghosts of evil, monsters intent on causing him sadness. Monsters who took away his father, his best friend. 

He closed the distance between himself and the boy, moving down to his level. The boy looked up, his light eyes full of unseen tears. 

"Your father was a hero," Vaughn said, his voice close to cracking. The boy leapt into his arms. Emotion washed over him, his arms coming to hug the boy, bring him the comfort he never had as a child, the assurance that everything would be fine. Mom would get a job, they would move, he would go to college and make his father's memory proud with every step he took. His mother would stop crying, would stop making extra food at dinner and waiting up for those nightly phone calls she was so accustom to receiving, stop crying or staring into space as the phone remained quiet. 

He would grow up, a smile on his face, a purpose running through his veins. And he would succeed. 

Wouldn't he?

Vaughn let the boy go, giving his sorrow to his mother. He stood and rejoined his countrymen as they briskly crossed the lawn to their cars, leaving this behind them as if it were a trivial scene they viewed through a lens, on a screen. And as he sat in his car, he caught his own reflection. 

A single tear snaked its way down his tired face. 

He had not cried a day since his father's death, since his mother became a shell. He would not give those silent men the satisfaction of his emotion, of his sadness. He saw the boy, crying as his mother lead him away, the casket descending into the ground behind them, worked by a man who had seen more death than life. 

Vaughn put his car into gear and drove.   
  



End file.
